Cart

Abstract Stained Glass Panel Garden Art

I have had this abstract stained glass panel project in my workshop for a long time. It has taken me way longer than I thought it would to get to and get it done. In fact, even now, it isn’t quite ready to be delivered yet!

Earlier this year I got a call from a lovely woman in the next town asking if I was interested in her husband’s glass stash and tools. He had passed a few years ago, and she was no longer able to do any stained glass work herself. I visited with her and after assessing the inventory I asked her how much she wanted for everything. All she wanted was for me to finish the last project her husband was working on. I thought no problem! What a generous offer.

The piece is an irregular shaped panel that is to hang inside a welded rebar frame that someone had constructed for them. The pattern was drawn, two sides of the zinc frame were soldered together, and two pieces of glass cut. I picked it up from there.

This stained glass panel is designed to be an outdoor piece. I used lead came and some zinc came for strength. The edge of the panel required that the zinc frame be bent and shaped. Fortunately, one of the tools I inherited was a came bender. I never could have done this piece without it. I never worked with a came bender before so it took some trial and error to get the curves just right.

Of course, there were some challenges along the way. The first was getting the three pieces of glass that surrounded the small circles all lined up and leaded up. This took a lot of patience and careful fitting. The second issue was poor planning on my part. I never checked to see if the pattern actually fit in the frame before I started construction. Once the stained glass panel was done I found that the frame was just a tad small. Lesson learned! Since it wasn’t off by much I thought that I could get my husband to bend the frame to make it fit. The bending, however, caused the corner weld to break. Another lesson learned! So now I have to find a welder nearby that can fix the frame for me. After that it will need a fresh coat of spray paint and it will be done! With any luck it should be delivered by the end of the week!

This is lovely. Would you mind telling me roughly the diameter of the rebar this is made with and how the deisgn is held into the ground. I see a stake. Is it just the same diameter rebar, but maybe set into concrete to stop it blowing over in the wind?
I’ve been looking for a while for an answer how to locate my designs into the garden so they don’t fall over. This seems like a great idea if you can weld.
Thanks
Jill

Hi Jill! The rebar was probably 3/4 inch. It had a stake that went into the ground made of the same rebar. Personally I did not think it was secure enough for the size of the piece. He made it based on a similar design that he saw somewhere. I like your idea of putting the rebar in cement. I would do two stakes, one on each side. I think one in the middle will just twist. It depends on how large your piece is going to be. One thing that helps is to design open areas into your piece that the wind can blow through. Here is a link to a Google search that shows ways that glass is displayed in gardens: glass garden

I had to go back and look at some pictures to remember how this was attached. There were two loops welded on to the top of the rebar. There were two hooks soldered onto the zinc frame. The hooks were placed into the loops and it just hung in the frame. It was not attached on the sides or bottom.